Japanese web celeb rabbit "Oolong" now has a
successor Remember that website where the guy in
Japan took totally cute daily snapshots of his beloved bunny named Oolong,
and remember how Oolong passed away, and he took snapshots of his rabbit's
death that were so sincere they just made you want to cry right into your
keyboard? I may be the last blog-obsessed geek to learn, but the guy has a
new, and equally photogenic rabbit named Yuebing ("moon-cake") Brace
yourself for more really cute rabbit photos. Link
Link.
Zimei isn't the first female writer in China to raise eyebrows over
sexually explicit autobiographical work -- check this link
for background on Mian Mian. (thanks, Invisible
Cowgirl)
A blatant act of racism by the Portland police was snapped
by a "citizen reporter" armed with a camera phone. The story and the
photos were published in the Portland Tribune and broadcasted on
television: "Police offers parked their car outside Ringlers restaurant
with a stuffed gorilla attached to the car's grill last Tuesday night, -
where a largely black crowd had gathered for a weekly hip-hop show
hosted by disc jockey Mello Cee. This is the kind of thing you expect to
see in the South, like a Confederate flag. They might as well paint
their faces black with white lips," said Mello Cee.
"Resident Calvin Washington who said he took the photos around 1 a.m.
last Tuesday morning outside Ringlers restaurant at 1332 W. Burnside St.
Washington said when he realized what was happening, he grabbed his cell
phone camera and walked outside to take pictures. 'I went out and
flicked a few pics. The police couldn't tell what I was doing because I
had the phone in my hand. They couldn't tell what it was,' he said."
The Portland Tribune published a follow-up article on Friday,
questioning whether the "incident may have launched the age of
technological vigilantism in Portland".
"[I wanted] to visually address recent events and the role
of the Supreme Court. Where have all our freedoms gone? The foundation
of our nation is based on broken treaties. A stack of money energizes
the book of law. Apache helicopters circle overhead as the Supreme Court
loiters around a river of death, the Court which allowed George W. Bush
to assume the office of President of the United States of America in
2000. A soldier strides toward battlefield while a woman pulls a cart of
produce. Hummers roll by. Mortar rounds flank the scene and a bear
witnesses."
"Jesus, I cannot BELIEVE you guys. In good faith, I put the
video back on the basis of the email you sent me, hoping that at least
some people would click on the mirror link at at least get the truth,
and information about how to replace the battery. Instead, you removed
the mirror link entirely, used the bandwidth and resources that I was
providing you exclusively on your front page, AGAIN without providing
ANY information whatsoever about how users can solve this problem, or
the fact that Apple now has an official $99 battery replacement, and on
top of it all, put ThruPort's banner on the front page! I've now served
91,629 downloads for you, for over 0.6 terabytes of data transfer. What
the f*** is you guys' problem? I guess that fact that you are liars
shouldn't surprise me, since that's exactly what your whole site and the
video is. Have fun with it, and whatever f***ed up satisfaction you get
from having as many people as possible see your video, and not even
wanting to tell people that there is a solution."
Wayne Correia's Magic Bus The
satellite-equipped rockstar tour bus of Critical Path founder and geek's geek Wayne
Correia is the subject of this San Francisco Chronicle article.
He (and his bus) saved my ass once in Black Rock City. I rode around with
30 pounds of gear on a young girl's banana-seat Huffy bike, all day long
in burning heat and whiteout dust storms, all over the desert, looking for
a functional satellite connection to file an audio report on Burning Man
for NPR. My skin was sunburned, my butt was aching, and I was as
dehydrated as an overdone tofurkey. And then, when I'd all but given up --
I stumbled on Mr. Correia. He said "Hey, I know your face from
Friendster!" -- and opened the door to a bus filled with nerd hotties and
unwired bandwidth.
The bus cannot be described as "regular." It's a luxury
cruiser of an ungainly vintage -- 1992, to be exact -- and is rumored to
have belonged to Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees. The carpet is
teal, with an ivory dolphin carved into the weave. (To be fair, Wayne
swears he's about to tear out the carpet because, he says, it's
"silly.") The wall lights are a peculiar construction of brass and
graduated glass rods that would fit on a set for "The Sopranos."
Gilt-edged cocktail glasses nest in the glass cupboards. In the front of
the bus are gray leather captain's chairs on swivels. In the back is a
bedroom lined with mirrored cabinets.
Wayne, who intends to install solar panels on the roof, somewhere
near the satellite uplink for his computer, bought the bus on eBay for
the bargain price of $200,000 in cash. He says that as he drove it from
Chicago, where he purchased it, to the Bay Area, he had a revelation: "I
realized, 'Oh, my God, I'm a bus driver! My grandfather was a bus driver
in L.A.for 40 years. He got up at 5 am every day. And now I'm a bus
driver, too!'"
Vietnam Veterans'
art online This online gallery features a portion
of the works in the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, which
contains works in various media created by vets from around the US. At
left: "Ambush Behind a Thin Wood Line," by John Plunkett:
"Our home base sat at the foot of the only mountain range
for about a hundred miles. It consisted of two mountains: Nui Ba Den and
Nui Ba Ra. These paintings are from a diary that was written in my brain
and in the brains of thousands of others, on a daily basis in Vietnam.
Some of the situations did happen to me; others were bad dreams, fears
of what might happen, hallucinations; images that seemed to appear out
of nowhere, for no reason."
In the comments, Sassan worries that this will put Hossein
in jeopardy. I fear his incredible activities online could do that as
well. But if he merely tries to run -- even if from afar, even if not
allowed to, even if unable to campaign or win -- sends a most powerful
message: Here is a man who has created a new political power base
online. We've joked about a blogger running for office in the U.S. Hoder
is doing it. We've joked about starting a revolution online. Hoder has
done it. I pray that Hoder does nothing to put himself at risk. But I
stand in awe of what he has accomplished.
update: Jed says, "
"Here are eight more ads from this company (with heavily overlapping
elements in some of them; the first two are particularly similar). Also,
here is more
info and a translation, plus a transcription of the lyrics. It seems that
the theme of the ad is 'expansion.' And more translation here.
At any rate, the other thing worth noting on that last page is that the
raccoon with the giant testicles is actually a tanuki, apparently a
raccoon-like nature spirit. Or else actually a raccoon, depending on which
source you believe. It's been speculated that Totoro is part tanuki, and
there's another Studio
Ghibli movie (not directed by Miyazaki) that features tanuki more
directly/prominently. And that's more than enough digression for one site
suggestion, so I'll stop now."
"When clambering into an anime-girl body suit just isn't enough for
you: there's MightyLady.Net, for
those who derive special enjoyment from giant robot women, either in
bondage, wrestling, doing gymnastics or on a slab being repaired. "
Their use is largely utilitarian:
snap a photo of your baby, your sunset, your face; then, share it with
friends or family. They're small and cheap. We use them to capture the
mundane, the obvious, and the personal. Soon, we'll use them to capture
and manipulate data: phonecams are becoming handheld barcode readers,
and tools for a variety of new mobile commerce applications.
The images they produce are undeniably crude, but like Polaroids or
snapshots from vintage or "toy" cameras, that lack of finesse lends a
distinctive, awkward charm. And the fact that they fuse together the
abilities to capture, view, and distribute what we see (through e-mail
or online photo weblogs) makes them revolutionary. Phonecams are
changing the way we see the world, and our place within it. They're an
extension of urban eyes. They democratize, hack, and deconstruct
photography. When everyone is both photographer and publisher, how will
art change? How will human conversation change? What will be the
difference between professional and amateur? Through SENT, we'll find
out.
Check out the growing list of invited participants
here -- and contact us if you're a
technology company who'd like to get involved. Soon, we'll announce the
launch of the completed project site, where anyone with a phonecam can
contribute their snapshots to the exhibition. Link.
update: Now, NPR's in the mix. They've issued a
"Phonecam Challenge," inviting listeners to contribute mobile phone snaps
-- some of which will be included in SENT. Link to more info on NPR
Phonecam Challenge. Listen: Real,
or Windows posted by Xeni Jardin at 9:23:56 AM permanent link
to this entry
Xeni on NPR's "Day
to Day": phonecam revolution On today's edition of the NPR program
"Day to Day," I
speak with host Alex Chadwick about how phonecams are changing the way we
communicate with each other, and the way we see the world around us. The
segment includes a live in-studio demo (which produced the phonecam
snapshot at left), and a chat with anthropologist Mimi Ito (yes, Joi Ito's sister!) who's been researching
phonecams and culture in Japan and the US for several years. On Monday,
she launched a "bento
blog" -- a phonecam photo gallery where she archives snapshots
pictures of the lunches she makes for her children every morning. How cool
is that? Link to
"Day to Day" home, listen to the archived show: Real,
or Windows
NPR's turkey Soda
taste test Click thumbnail for full-size phonecam
snap. "Day to
Day" host Alex Chadwick did taste test of that Jones Turkey and Gravy
soda yesterday. I was in the studio just before the moment of horror, and
snapped this phonecam shot of NPR producer Kathryn Fox preparing for Mr.
Chadwick's total grossout. Listen to the segment here, after 12PM PST. Link
"Kumiko" says: "can't stop myself to go to the deadline. The second
series I took off my wig and I wrapped my head tightly. At my neck, there
are no hole for new air. There are no tricks in these pix. Please stop
your breath while you're browsin these. Please, please NOT do the same.
You must be killed. "
By the time you read this, the Geocities Japan site will be
BoingBoinged to death, but: Link (didn't
notice nudity or explicit sexual content, but didn't stay too long,
either)
I finally got to see the paperback
edition of my novel Down and Out
in the Magic Kingdom, which is out just in time for Christmas. For
various good reasons, Tor elected to publish the hardcover in January of
last year, too late for Christmas shoppers. A lot of people complained
(including me), but it's clear that they knew what they were doing -- the
book didn't end up competing with the big, frontlist holiday titles and
sold very well indeed. Still, I'm very grateful indeed that the paperback
(which Amazon has for $10.36) is out in time for the holidays this year.
I also got to hold a copy of the second
edition of A Place So Foreign and
Eight More, my short story collection, which sold out its first print
run in six weeks or so and is well on the way to selling out the second
edition, I'm told. A bunch of you submitted errata for this printing, and
made it a better book altogether. I'm told that the next printing
will have the Neil
Gaiman quote added to the cover, which is all to the good indeed.
As if that weren't enough, I also got a stack of gorgeous,
color-cover advance review copies of Eastern Standard Tribe, my
second novel which will be a March, 2004 hardcover on sale in late January
(pre-order
it for a 30 percent discount). The William Gibson quote on the cover
("Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar -- a hard combination to beat
(or, these days, to find)") looks unspeakably swell...
The icing on the cake is that I signed off on the inclusion of Flowers from Alice, a
short story that Charlie Stross and I co-wrote for Mike Resnick's
forthcoming New Faces in Science Fiction anthology, in a Year's Best
Science Fiction anthology. posted by Cory Doctorow at 4:46:11 AM permanent link
to this entry
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Wired: Mark Cuban -- I'm a Maverick, not a
mogul! I interviewed Mark
Cuban (Broadcast.com founder, Dallas Mavs owner, HDnet founder, etc.) for this month's
Wired Magazine about his recent purchase of Landmark Theatres --
and his plans to build a digital entertainment empire in which production,
development, and distribution are all housed under one corporate roof.
Q: How is this any different
from the studio conglomerates that led to antitrust laws?
A: Digital makes filmmaking cheaper and more accessible, so
we see ourselves as a conduit for new, independent voices who'd
otherwise never have a shot. You could shoot your film on digital, dump
it on a hard drive, edit it on a laptop, send us that file, and 20
minutes later we could show it in a theater or upload it to a satellite.
You could say that if we became huge, we'd risk becoming a Microsoft.
But if we become huge, we want to become more like a Linux.
* "There is a new, witty nouveau afoot, from the Vallo
watering can by Monika Mulder at Ikea, which looks like a stork," Link
(halfway down the page) * "to the coffee and tea set by Greg Lynn
for Alessi, which opens like a clove of garlic." Link * "Tord Boontje's chandeliers for Swarovski look like clouds of
slender branches surrounding a light." Link * "In the United States, the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's
addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum looks like a giant bird about to
take off." Link *
"William Sawaya, a designer based in Milan, created a blossom-like
plastic Calla chair for Heller, which was inspired by a lily." Link * "A new digital camera for Creative Labs by the California company
Whipsaw Design takes its inspiration from the many-chambered spiral
shell called the nautilus." Link
Charles "Chucky" Saatchi, swinging
advertising mogul, thinks it's time for you to revel in the consuming
pleasure that is Lovemarks: the future beyond brands. At the oddly
confusing Lovemarks.com, "real
people" write in about how favorite brands moved from objects to something
more like family members. Adidas: "Reminds me of my childhood." BMW:
"Mystery, aura and history oozes out." Abercrombie & Fitch: "I started
wearing their clothes and it made me cool and hip differentiating me with
the rest of the Gap wearing populace." (Snicker. Mmm, Snickers! I could go
for one of those...)
There's a certain blurring between
the two types of dressing up in Japan, but there are certain
distinctions. Cosplay is almost always mask free and draws on various
video game, manga and anime characters. This is more fantastic in look
generally. The majority of cosplayers in Japan aren't too happy about
its infiltration into the hardcore adult market, but there's no denying
its clear debt/links to the fetish scene. There's a book out in English
called "Cosplay Girls" and you can find a fair amount of adult (and
non-adult) cosplay related material via J-List. Nao Oikawa has done a fair
amount of this adult cosplay work.
The use of masks makes it kigurumi. These are in origin the same as
people in Goofy outfits of whatever at Disneyland. You seem them
frequently enough at amusement parks in Japan or doing product
promotions in the street. These are also generally drawn from the
manga/anime/game world. Now some people do this for a living and some do
it as a hobby. Obviously it's a step beyond as these people tend to wear
full skin-toned body stockings, unitards and whatever in addition to the
masks. Also, you suspect that many of the hobbyists are men although
this isn't always the case. It's just impossible to tell, although the
hands do give it away much of the time.
What you then discover is that kigurumi is further subdivided between
people who wear manga styled masks and costumes (pointy chins, huge
eyes, etc) and those who go for a ultra-realist look, where the costumes
become much more everyday. This then sort of leads on to Japanese ultrarealist love
dolls.
In "Robo-receptionist
clocks on," Nature tells us the story of Inkha, a robot which greets
guests of King's College London (KCL) and adds artificial intelligence
to the front desk. "Inkha -- short for 'interactive neurotic King's head
assembly' -- will dole out directions and events information. Like
receptionists across the globe, she will also comment on the weather and
fashion faux pas." Inkha was funded with a ÂŁ8,400 grant and has become
a celebrity in the U.K. It even has its own website, http://www.sallywhoosh.btinternet.co.uk/.
More details are available in this
overview, which also includes pictures of Inkha.
Erotic cosplay
doll-mask photos The snapshots of photorealistic latex
doll faces on this website -- some deconstructed, others complete and
ready to wear -- are as unnerving as they are flat-out beautiful. Link
"After you posted that creepy Sabrina link on BoingBoing, [I discovered
that this is] a form of cosplay called Kigurumi. This site has some
good definitions, and this site
also has interviews with people who do kigurumi. I am throughly creeped
out now, and I blame you. Especially after seeing this page. But wait, it
gets weirder: here,
and here. Don't miss this
-- middle aged man turns into Real Doll. But wait, thats a copy of this. I'm
going to attempt to sleep now, I expect I'll have some really strange
dreams."
The Kigurimi enthusiast behind the mask in the snapshot at left (from
one of the sites Justin points to), says:
"This is my all time favorite female mask. It is made by Natori of the
Photogenic mask site. The cost is around $900.00 and it is in my opinion
the most realistic female mask I have seen. Plus I love to be a super cute
Japanese girl. The only drawback to this mask is the limited vision and
breathing."
News from the
Iranian blogosphere Toronto-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan points us to two new
developments. First: the launch of iranFilter, a new collaborative website
focused on Iran (Link). And, news
that Iranian vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi has started a weblog --
he's the first major Iranian politician to do so. (Link to Persian blog, link to the
vice-president's English site.). posted by Xeni
Jardin at 10:38:04 PM permanent link
to this entry
Weird, weird cosplay
Japorn. Sort of. I can't explain. I have no idea what this is, but it's
totally freaking me out. Like a Philip K. Dick stripshow. All I can tell
you is that this link takes you to a Windows Media video clip in which a
(male) human dressed in (female) animated child character drag performs a
sort of webcam erotic tease. Shemale hentai cosplay? Something like that.
Please, someone, explain. Keep watching, eventually Sabrina strips. No
actual nudity, just oddity. Link(Thanks, Warren, thanks Matt)
The bot-builders' expo has apparently been asked to stop using, well,
the name ROBOlympics. "Of course, the hinge is the term 'athletic event,'
" says David. "Are robot events athletic? Doesn't really matter if I can't
afford the lawyers."
The ROBOlympics event is slated to take place at Fort Mason Center
Herbst Pavilion, San Francisco, California, in March of 2004, and will
include contestants from around the world to help promote robotics,
engineering, and education. posted by Xeni
Jardin at 8:41:38 PM permanent link
to this entry
Here Comes Santa Claus! - Ignition Books Fall 2004
While sorting through old photographs at my mother's house one
Christmas, I came across a photograph that was to haunt me for years. It
was a photo taken at a mall of my brother Michael sitting on the lap of
Santa Claus. Innocent enough- loads of people have pictures of
themselves or thier children sitting on Santa's lap...it's a tradition
to see Santa every year, tell him what you'd like for Christmas,and get
a candy cane. What struck a chord with me about this picture was the
Santa himself. Slouched into the chair, one arm clumsily draped around
my brother, much in the same way barflys casually hug thier fellow
brethren before falling to the floor in a stupor. I looked
closer...thick black body hair sprouted from every opening of the ill
fitting Santa suit, the too-short trouses- revealing fish white,
strangely pocked legs. This Santa boasted one enormous black eyebrow, an
5'oclock shadow (needless the say the beard was falling off) and the
dull gleam of narcotics in the one eye that wasn't drooping and looking
far past the camera. This was GREAT! I then turned my attention to my
brother who I now realised was not merely smiling on command for the
camera but rather was grimacing, rigid in fear on his hobo Santa's lap,
fists clenched, eyes silently pleading. Oh how I laughed.
After I finished enjoying my brother's pain, I started thinking about
the whole Santa Claus phenomenon...every mall has a Santa come
Christmas-time, and let's face it- most of those Santas ain't "Miracle
on 42'd Street" quality. I figured there were probably tons of these
photos floating around, kids horrified by thier low rent Santa and being
scolded if they didn't "Smile, dammit" for the capture of a warm holiday
memory. I began to ask around if anyone else had horrible Santa pics,
and indeed, a small flood came in...drunk Santas, passed out Santas,
creepy Santas. I decided to make a book and share the wealth.
Of course, the more the merrier so I am ever on the lookout for Santa
pics for inclusion in the book. I'm hoping to get as many as I can so I
can pick the choicest, the most god awful,and the funniest Santas with
terrified children for the project. People can mail or email me photos
that they'd like to submit. In return, people's whose pictures I include
in the book will get thier name in the book (unless the shame requires
anonymity) and a free copy of the book. These pictures would only be
used for this book and any promotional press associated with it. I will
return all hard copies (photos, discs, ect). Contracts will be required
for publication.
Interested person can mail photos or 300dpi scans of thier drunken,
flea ridden, pervy, waxy complexioned Santas to me at:
Kirsten Anderson Ignition Publishing 4015 Airport Way S
Seattle WA 98121 (206)374-8977
Autistic savants Steve Silberman, who wrote a brilliant
piece on geeks and autism in Wired a couple years back, has a great
long feature in the current issue about autistic "savants" -- people who
have an instinctive, brilliant grasp of some abstruse task, such as music
or math. There's some very good stuff about this in Sacks's The
Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, particularily when he discusses
very "low-functioning" people who have an intuitive understanding of music
and numbers that is almost spiritual in nature.
When Matt was 6, he confided to his mother, "My mind is made
of math problems." Diane started buying him math workbooks for kids
twice his age. He zipped through them so quickly, she learned to hide a
few in a drawer so he'd have something to work on the following day.
Then one night, Diane and Larry heard a melody coming from
downstairs. It was their son, playing "London Bridge" on a toy keyboard.
Diane brought Matt into the family room and introduced him to the middle
C on the piano. Within a day, he was devouring music books as hungrily
as he had math books.
Matt took classical lessons for a year, then Diane enrolled him in
the jazz program at the New England Conservatory of Music. Upon meeting
his first jazz instructor there, a bearish Israeli whose last name is
Katsenelenbogen, Matt cried out, "Six syllables!"
Robot in the Sky!
(almost) Seiko Epson Corp. showed off their
flying micro-robot at this week's International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo.
EE Times reports that ultrasonic wristwatch motors keep the 8.9 grab
machine airborne. It's also outfitted with Bluetooth and several
microsensors including a gyro and camera. Right now though, battery weight
keeps it tethered to its power supply. (The photo is from Yahoo! News.) Link(Thanks, Gabe!) posted by David Pescovitz at 3:20:34 PM permanent link
to this entry
Last month, I bought a Treo 600, the new PalmOS smartphone.
I'm still marveling over one aspect: its size. When I took the Treo out
of the box, it looked half as big as its predecessor, the Treo 300. The
first comment of most people who see it is, "Wow, that's tiny for a
smartphone!" When I actually put the current and prior Treo models
side-by-side, however, I was in for a shock. The Treo 600 is slightly
narrower, but it's also taller, thicker, and heavier. In other words,
essentially the same size. The many small industrial design changes make
a world of subjective difference.
I use this example not because I'm enthralled with my new toy (though
I admit I am), but because of what it suggests for the mobile world.
Subtle improvements can have huge consequences. The same is true when it
comes to functionality. A torrent of incremental advances are now
producing converged devices that are "good enough" at each of their
primary functions. This will have significant consequences for both
device manufacturers and operators.
Altnet, the company most responsible for the proliferation
of spyware,
recently acquired a patent
which allows easy identification of files on a P2P network. In the
words of Derek Broes, Altnet's executive vice president of worldwide
operations, Altnet will "...focus on protecting and commercializing our
patented technology and realizing the potential it offers content owners
by commercializing peer-to-peer networks". Just another day in the world
of little-league software companies you think. Not so.
Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this picture. The
so-called "Truenames" patent, filed in 1997, is little-more than a
marketspeak-friendly name slapped on a decades old and widely known
technique in computer science called "hashing". A hashing algorithm
takes a file, and produces a "signature" for that file, a short set of
letters and numbers that, for any two identical files, will always be
the same. This technique has often been used to detect identical files,
or to verify the integrity of software downloaded over the Internet.
Clearly, it requires very little imagination to suppose that hashing
might also prove useful when verifying the integrity of files on a P2P
network.
This, of course, puts Mr Broes' quote in a somewhat sinister new
light. In a classic example of P.R "doublespeak", what he refers to as
protection, most would see as an anti-competitive offensive, and what he
refers to as commercialization, most would refer to as extortion. Yes,
the implication of recent
public statements from Altnet is that they plan to use their
government granted monopoly on an obvious idea to force other P2P
companies, through threat of litigation, into cooperating with whatever
scheme they are cooking up.
What changed everything was her decision in April
to start her own online blog at a new Chinese site for personal diaries.
She said she thought it would be fun. While writing her magazine column,
she had hopped from man to man, sometimes hopping to two men at once,
sometimes hopping to married men. Her topics, though, remained more
thematic than explicit.
Flight 001 is a chi-chi luggage-and-travel-accessory
boutique, with retro-style Pan-Am-logo bags and such. I'm particularily
fond of the airline-safety-card-print wallets, passport-sleeves and etc.
A trufan of the sadly defunct Journey Thru
Innerspace ride from Disneyland's Tomorrowland has recreated the ride as a
3D model and is publishing stills and flythroughs of the textured mesh. 
ScoutWalker is a novel form of Star Wars porn: giant
AT-ST Walkers engaged in scenes from the Kama Sutra. 
Discovery toys is selling an $80 toy called the DNA
Explorer, which allows small children to extract and sequence the DNA from
a variety of foodstuffs. 
For 60 Euros (and up), avant-gardge Viennese artist
Evelyn Fürlinger will hand-crochet you a custom laptop sleeve with a
design of your choosing: I'm especially fond of the red go-faster stripes.
Printable templates for folding-and-glueing together
Kubrick-like characters from Mario Brothers and other pieces of the
popcult pantheon. 
My friend Kirsten Anderson (who owns the far out 
iPod's Dirty Secret is a three-minute movie made by
an iPod owner to protest the fact that Apple won't replace his
18-month-old iPod's dead battery. He's engaged in a one-man guerrilla
anti-advertising campaign to stencil a warning over Apple's street posters
promoting iPod.
Subversive Cross-stitch: rude and snarky
cross-stitch patterns to amaze and delight. 
Boing Boing pal Ken Goldberg of UC Berkeley
invites us back to play another round of Tele-Twister, the
telepresence-based version of the classic party game. The mad professor
says:
A Magic Cube is a three dimensional Magic Square: a
3D grid in which the numbers in all the rows, columns and diagonals total
up to the same number. The very first order-5 Magic Cube (previously
suspected to be impossible) has been discovered. 
Amazing B3TA photoshop challenge: graphics from the
"Victorian Internet." Lovely, witty steampunkery to be found here.